1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an ink cartridge of a jet printer, and particularly to a refilling needle for refilling an ink cartridge.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the conventional jet printer, the ink is loaded in a cartridge, and the ink jetted on the printing paper is controlled with a sprayer; when ink in the cartridge is used up, the cartridge has to be replaced for further printing operation; however, the ink cartridge supplied by the original manufacturer is considerably expensive, i.e., a user to print a lot of papers will spend a lot of money.
In the conventional ink cartridge of a jet printer, the ink chamber of the ink cartridge is usually loaded with an equalization air bladder or a piece of sponge for soaking and supplying ink. The ink cartridge supplied by the original manufacturer usually has an equal pressure in the ink chamber during the automatic manufacturing process, and there will be no leak during printing operation.
In the conventional ink cartridge loaded with a sponge, an empty ink cartridge can be replenished by sealing and closing the end opening of the output port by means of a glue paper; then, a center through hole on lid of the top surface of the ink cartridge is sealed with a membrane; a syringe is sucked with a suitable amount of ink. A slender hollow needle is used to stab through the membrane on the through hole, and to the most lower portion of the storage chamber so as to inject ink in the storage chamber; however, the sponge in the storage chamber contains a great amount of bubbles, and the ink injected is unable to exhaust the air therein; as a result, the ink injected in is limited. Since there is a mesh furnished between the storage chamber and the second chamber, if air in the second chamber is unable to exhaust, the ink in the storage chamber will be unable to enter the second chamber via the mesh, and the ink will be unable to flow into the spraying chamber.
When the ink cartridge on a printer fails to print continuously, the major cause is that the sprayer in the printing head is in short supply of ink, i.e., lack of sufficient ink flowing through the passage defined by the bearing member; in other words, if too much air enters the second chamber in the printing head, such air would enter the storage chamber of the sprayer to cause interruption of ink, i.e., having no ink to spray out; in the event of no ink to spray out of the sprayer for a considerable time, the sprayer might be burned out.
In the former application No. 09/328,378, xe2x80x9cAn apparatus for the ink cartridge of a jet printerxe2x80x9d of the applicant, now abandoned, which mainly comprises an ink-storage container and a cylinder; the ink-storage container has a cylindrical body portion, of which the bottle mouth is furnished with a retaining ring and screw threads to be connected with a piston ring and a threaded cap respectively so as to store ink; one end of the cylindrical body portion is furnished with an outer body portion having a large diameter; the cylindrical body portion and the inner cylinder of the cylinder are assembled together; the piston ring of the bottle mouth is in close contact with the inner cylinder; the front end of the sealed surface of the cylinder is furnished with a tapered ink straw to be plugged and connected with a through hole of the ink cartridge; hold the outer surface of the cylinder, and then the thumb pushes the shoulder portion of the ink-storage container upwards so as to generate a negative pressure for replenishing ink into the ink cartridge.
The prime feature of the present invention is to provide a long and a short syringe needles mounted, through a connector, on an ink container of an ink cartridge; the container is loaded with an ink-storage sponge; the two syringe needles are directly plugged into the ink-storage sponge; when the container is squeezed, the ink will be refilled in by means of a convection effect. As soon as the ink level is raised up to the cut on the end of the short syringe needle, the convection refilling of ink will be discontinued automatically.
Another feature of the present invention is that the method of using the long and short syringe needles to refill ink into the ink cartridge would not cause ink to overflow because of squeezing the ink bottle.
Still another feature of the present invention is that the method of using the long and short syringe needles to refill the ink cartridge is an infiltration method; the refilling is done in accordance with the sucking force of the ink-storage sponge, and the ink refilled would not result in a high pressure in the ink chamber, which usually causes overflow.
A further feature of-the present invention is that the method of using the long and short syringe needles to refill ink can have the refilling needles plugged directly into the ink-storage sponge of the ink cartridge; then, slightly squeeze the ink bottle once, and release the ink bottle; then, a convection refilling will continue between the refilling needles and the ink-storage sponge.
A still further feature of the present invention is that when use the long and short syringe needles to refill the ink cartridge, the cut of the long syringe needle can plug into the ink-storage sponge; when the ink level raises to a height equal to the cut of the short syringe needle, the convection refilling operation will be discontinued automatically; therefore, the ink level can be designed and set in advance.
Yet another feature of the present invention is that the refilling needle assembly includes two syringe needles, which are mounted on a needle seat together in parallel; the width of the two syringe needles is slightly less than the diameter of the refilling hole so as to facilitate the refilling needles to plug into the ink-storage sponge of the ink cartridge easily.